The celebrated entertainment district in London’s West End began to take geographical shape in 1616 when actor Christopher Beeston built the Cockpit playhouse on the foundations of a bird-baiting arena in Drury Lane. Only months after opening, the new playhouse survived a Shrove Tuesday riot by the city’s apprentices, after which contemporaries also called the property The Phoenix.
As manager of its resident companies, Beeston tailored the playhouse’s style and repertory to the cultural tastes and interests of an economically privileged clientele. The sprawling rural parishes of St Giles in the Fields, St Martin in the Fields, and St Clement Danes had become attractive locations for the lavish townhouses of elite and would-be courtiers, particularly along High Holborn and the Strand, close to the heart of national power at Whitehall. The material magnificence of the Stuart court came to be sustained by a host of specialized craftspeople and retailers settled in Drury Lane and its surrounding streets. Many of these inhabitants came from continental Europe, infusing the area with cultural and linguistic diversity. At the same time, local churchwardens recorded influxes of Irish, French, and international refugees from religious conflicts abroad. Integrating these dense communities sometimes proved challenging, notably in cases of bubonic plague and other infectious disease, or when the smoke from burned sea-coal became an environmental concern.
